Half of What I Say Read online

  ‘Look Kanno, Mir is a friend of the revolution. Don’t say no just because your jaat is in the habit of doing so. What do you have to lose? You’re here, he’s here. At least listen to what he has to say. Okay? Now, how about giving me a darshan of your sweet breasts?’

  ‘Fuck off.’ Then she laughed. ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Okay, let’s return and I’ll introduce you. Then make up your mind.’

  They found the poet in a knot of students on the terrace. Mir Alam Mir could have passed for an IAS officer or one of Nehru’s distinguished-looking relatives. He shifted smoothly between Hindi and a slightly-accented English. His voice could have been mistaken for that of a woman, but as it grew on her, the other voices began to sound too masculine, too feminine, too gender-specific.

  Sawai flung his arm around Mir’s shoulders. ‘Mir-ji, here’s my genius scientist professor girlfriend. Kannagi.’ Sawai sounded genuinely proud. Kannagi squeezed his hand.

  ‘Kannagi.’ The poet took pleasure in the syllables. ‘Madrasi?’

  ‘Human.’

  Mir made a curious motion with his right hand. ‘My mistake, my mistake. Sawai tells me you are a professor of Physics.’

  ‘Assistant professor. Computer Science.’

  ‘And you paint?’

  ‘God, no. Computer art.’

  ‘Computer art.’ The poet made a face. ‘You are Anand Dixit’s sister?’

  ‘Sister-in-law.’ She grinned. ‘Are we going to have a real conversation or what?’

  Mir laughed, glancing at Sawai as he did so, then took her hands in his. ‘I’m so sorry, let us start over. Durga mentioned you several times. You were precious to him.’

  ‘Yeah? No kidding?’ She was pleased.

  ‘Yeah. No kidding.’ Mir mimicked her accent, but his smile showed he was teasing. ‘If only he were here to confirm my words. But as Surendra Prakash warned us so many years ago, in a restless age, a man at peace with himself will inevitably encounter the system.’

  Silence.

  ‘Well, the system is going to inevitably encounter us too,’ said Kannagi.

  ‘Vande Mataram,’ shouted Sawai, raising a clenched fist. The crowd around him took up the cry. Vande Mataram. Vande Mataram.

  ‘Can we talk in private?’ asked Mir.

  Sawai encircled them with his arms, cutting them off the crowd as well as herding them towards a corner of the terrace. ‘Come, let us talk.’

  Later, towards dawn, when she got up to pee, fragments of the conversation with Mir swirled in her sleep-addled head. They had talked hazaar random shit. Mir had sat next to her, holding her hand, as if they were going on a school picnic trip. Funny guy. He was both filmi and authentic at the same time. She’d expected to have little in common with an Urdu litterateur, and she didn’t, but it didn’t matter. There was that sense of a connection which has no name; she liked him and could tell it was reciprocal.

  She had said straight off, ‘You can have the files,’ figuring they could now talk about more important things but instead of being pleased, he’d been astonished. Worried, even. Was she always so trustful? Did she know what the files contained?

  ‘Not really. It was Durga’s, so I didn’t poke around too much. It looked like a massive poem. Ajaya? That’s what the folders were called. I’m sorry I deleted some of it.’

  It was as if she’d kicked the poet in his hypothetical balls. Deleted? Had she said deleted? No, no, it was fine. How was she to know? Durga had given his permission. If it was deleted, it was deleted.

  ‘Relax, Mir. Nothing’s ever fully deleted in software.’ He was so funny. ‘I only deleted a folder and I bet I can retrieve it from the stick. I didn’t know Durga wrote poetry. But I’m not surprised.’

  Ditto, ditto. Mir was happy again. Poem, essay, play, film, novel, Durga had tried his hand at everything. What did the form matter? Content was king, queen and the royal eunuch. Mir said he’d received the news about the files as the gift of one last conversation with his friend.

  ‘I’m certain,’ said Mir, ‘Durga’s poem was inspired by the Ramayana.’

  ‘What’s the Ramayana?’ asked Kannagi.

  ‘Spiritual advice Maharishi Vasistha gave a prince called Rama.’ Sawai sounded confident.

  ‘Sawai, you’re thinking of the Yoga Vasistha. The Ramayana is a minor epic. It has a Prince Rama as well. The two Ramas are often confused. I allude to the matter in my novel.’

  ‘What’s the novel called?’ Sawai already had his smartphone out.

  Kannagi glanced at him, exasperated. As if the fucker read novels. ‘It hasn’t appeared yet.’

  ‘What’s it about then?’ asked Sawai. ‘Give us a hint, Mir-ji.’

  Mir was only too glad to oblige. ‘It’s a love triangle. My novel’s about an impossible man who’s in love with an impossible woman.’

  ‘That’s only two impossible objects,’ said Kannagi. ‘Where’s the triangle?’

  ‘She’s definitely a mathematician,’ said Mir to Sawai, smiling. ‘The lovers are persecuted, my dear Kannagi, as lovers must be. The world is the third object. A ten-headed demon is the world. Do you see a triangle now?’

  ‘Sure. When’s the novel coming out?’

  ‘No idea. It’s been five years.’

  Five years! Kannagi could imagine working on a research problem for five years, but those five years better generate a shit load of papers. ‘What the hell’s taking so long?’

  ‘Five years,’ repeated Mir. ‘It might take another five before I’m ready.’

  ‘Another five? Holy crap.’

  ‘I’m not McDonald’s. I’ll send you my novel, tell me what you think. Be frank. Don’t worry about my feelings. I abhor praise.’

  ‘Maybe I should wait to read the final version?’

  ‘No, we might all be dead. I’ll email it to both of you. A small token of my gratitude for the files.’

  Awesome. A reading assignment. A frikkin novel that too. That should teach you, Kind Deed.

  But she’d been very glad to have met the poet. Most people could be other people but Mir Alam Mir couldn’t help being Mir Alam Mir. Definitely a day to really miss Durga.

  Missing Durga. Missing feature. Missing feature of the landscape while walking to Sawai’s apartment. Dogs. Yes! Where the hell were all the street dogs? She hadn’t seen a single one. Weird.

  Kannagi returned to the bed, jacking up the fan’s speed along the way, which in turn awoke Sawai. Kanno, he mumbled, and followed it with something in Marathi. She didn’t understand and she didn’t care. The weight of his head on her stomach was a caress and the soothing timbre of his snores, an embrace. All was well. You stupid girl, she thought, content.

  6

  ESHWAR PILLAI HAD SPARED NO EXPENSE. THE CESSNA CITATION’S sleek lines had been an instant mood-improver. Their pilot was an ex-flyboy from the Israeli Air Force, and he provided a steady stream of impressive numbers. The twin Williams/Rolls-Royce FJ44-2C turbofan engines, each with 2,400 pounds of thrust, allowed the Cessna Citation CJ2 to climb at 2,176 feet per minute. After climbing to 20,000 feet, less than half the aircraft’s certified ceiling of 45,000 feet, they’d cruise at just under 350 knots or about 650 kilometres per hour. The flight distance was 1,740 kilometres. They would be in Bangalore in just under three hours.

  Their ‘flight companion’ Amelie—smooth-cheeked, ironed and coiffed—had also been an instant mood-improver.

  ‘Nepali girls can be very beautiful,’ Ratnakar had remarked, and at Anand’s surprised ‘Ratnakar, you goat,’ he’d got busy providing his boss with updates on Pillai’s multimedia empire.

  Seventy-three percent of Pillai’s profits derived from action games, movies, erotic toys and mythological comic books, but it was down six percent from three years ago. Pillai’s efforts to find make-up growth in areas as diverse as sports equipment, simulation software, machine tools and education had proved to be less than successful. Bankruptcies, roughly speaking. Failures, to be precise.

&n
bsp; However, if Pillai was in trouble, this Citation did a great job of hiding it. Anand calculated that it had to cost Pillai upwards of four crores annually to afford the mood-improvement device. Ratnakar estimated it had to be more like six.

  ‘Airhostess chokri is top of the drawer, sir. And this is a Citation. Even the Cessna Corvalis is at least three crores.’

  Ratnakar had more data waiting. Pillai’s Hatyachar Games had been the most profitable piece of his empire. But like the other components, it too was bleeding. The outfit’s fundamentals seemed solid enough, and he liked Pillai’s gung-ho attitude. Perhaps Pillai was just a lousy manager.

  Amelie arrived with refreshments and a delightful smile. As she leaned forward to confer with him, Anand was struck by her youth. It was a long way from Nepal. Or more likely, one of the Northeastern states.

  ‘Mr Pillai said he’d be having lunch with you, but we do have a breakfast menu if you’re interested. We also have a small wine selection as well as other beverages.’

  She sounded slightly nervous, as if she’d been warned not to screw up. Anand smiled to set her at ease. He had no intention of getting drunk.

  ‘Some iced tea if you have any, otherwise an iced espresso.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We have peach iced tea. Would you like to try some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee beads? Mr Pillai is a big fan. It’s basically jelly beans with injected Dagoba espresso. Somewhere between chocolate ice-cream and snowdrops.’ She smiled, clearly proud of her analogy.

  ‘Sounds wonderful. However, Dunkin’ Donuts is from the USA, isn’t it? I try to avoid using American products. Who makes the peach tea?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir… Please wait, I will check.’

  She returned a few minutes later, beaming.

  ‘Sir, it’s Godrej.’ She peered at the label. ‘Godrej Beverages. Is that okay?’

  ‘It is more than okay.’

  ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything else? Some tyropitas? They’re, like, my total fav.’

  ‘Never heard of them. What are they?’

  ‘Greek feta cheese wrapped in phyllo pastry—like a samosa, but not so oily or hard-soft. The pastry and cheese together—’ She drew her long fingers together, ‘it’s crumbly-soft or soft-crumbly. Yum. Finger-licking good.’ She laughed, embarrassed the way women sometimes were when they revealed a sensory pleasure. ‘I think you’ll like it. It’s supplied by Taj SATS.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve made me hungry, Amelia.’

  ‘Amelie. I’m here to satisfy you, sir. Tamba ek second.’ She smiled sweetly and went to get a sample.

  ‘Now, that’s service, Ratnakar. Don’t you think so? She even tried to speak Marathi.’

  Ratnakar pursed his lips.

  Amelie returned with a plate of tyropitas. Anand took a piece. She still seemed tense, and Anand wondered if she now felt responsible for his enjoyment. Poor thing. The intensity with which people felt things had no relation to the size of the stakes involved. He was relieved the tyrowhatever was nice enough; he wouldn’t have to fake his enjoyment. He washed it down with peach tea and made the appropriate noises.

  ‘Will you be staying long in Bangalore, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe overnight. But I’ll be returning to Delhi tomorrow.’

  ‘Bangalore is a fun city. There’s lots to do. You must have tons of friends, a super-important VIP like you?’

  She was chatty. He smiled. ‘Depends. Thanks for the pitas, Amelie. It’ll help me focus on work.’

  ‘My pleasure, sir.’

  She excused herself gracefully.

  ‘Friendly girl,’ he told Ratnakar.

  ‘Purely corporate, sir. High-flying, jet-set, hi-bye, have a nice day. Means nothing. Convent educated.’ Ratnakar seemed to think it was an explanation, and it probably was. Ratnakar resumed outlining the basic vitals of Eshwar Pillai’s several businesses. But when he began outlining possible strategies, Anand raised his hand for silence. A little paranoia didn’t hurt. This was Pillai’s plane after all.

  #

  Anand liked Eshwar. The man was a loose cannon, but a cannon with brass balls. Sometimes the facts about a person are marvellous once their legend has been swallowed. But this was the genuine article.

  The legend of Eshwar Pillai was well known. Once, Eshwar Pillai had been a coder, but fortunately, his passion for computer games had quickly put an end to that career. Both coders and gamers wrestle with the same dark angel, but their attitudes are totally different.

  Coders are basically beasts of burden, content to work the same few acres of code every day, dreaming of the rain, the first hissing rain, dreaming of the day when they’ll stand gloating, large nostrils twitching, muddy hides glistening, gloating in the downpour of dollars on the cracked, broken earth. In contrast, gamers are corridor-shaped maze animals, wild and twitchy, doggedly seeking exit no matter how large a universe they might find themselves in.

  Trapped in a cubicle, four feet by six feet, Eshwar Pillai did what instinct, habit and too much caffeine had primed him to do. He fled the maze. He raced past the cubicles of the User Interface specialists, past the probing tentacles of the three deaf, dumb, and blind QA interns, past the Valhalla of the distributed architecture geniuses, was blocked by HR’s performance review section, backtracked past the database farm, splattered the swarm of PHP zombies, Matrix bullet-dodged the porting maniacs, past the sphinxes of cryptography, past the dreaded thread-deadlock gurus, past even the insane System Analysts of Doom, and finally, raising the Magic Orb of CORBA and electro-charging it with the energy bars he’d so painfully accumulated in the course of his run, Eshwar hurtled through the final frontier: the Anus of Linus.

  A year later, a subdued Eshwar wrote up his million shattered pieces in a format that noncombatants battling nothing more serious than a too-hot pizza slice might have called a ‘computer game,’ but was in truth, his searing memoir. He called it ‘Hatyachar’ and the game made him a rich man. Cubicle people, it turned out—coders and non-coders alike—had been aching to hack their colleagues to death. Or as the Wall Street Journal put it: Eshwar’s niche-marketing worked in a consumer-driven vertical with fickle price points.

  ‘Look Anand, you need me.’ Eshwar pushed the plate of cashews towards him. A new plate magically appeared by his side. The waiters at the Dum Pukht Jolly Nabobs vied with each other to serve him. ‘And I need you. You have the reach, I have the content to help you make the Weather.’

  ‘I’m not in the Weather-making business. Or in the content business. I merely report what India is thinking.’ Anand worked on his iced tea. ‘And if your content is so great, why has your share price tanked?’

  ‘We’ll get to what your business is about in a minute. Let me answer your question first.’ Eshwar pounced on a passing waiter. ‘Look at him, Anand. Go ahead, take a good look.’

  The waiter stood petrified, eyes rolling.

  ‘Look at it. This is Bharat, not India. Does it look like something that plays a video game, reads luxury magazines or buys an erotic toy for his wife?’ Eshwar shifted to Telugu. ‘Sivaa, my man, do you know what a tweet is?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘Heard of Freakonomics?’

  No saar.

  ‘Halo?’

  No saar.

  ‘More beer, Sivaa.’ Eshwar released the man. ‘See Anand? There’s my problem. This fellow lives in a parallel nation called Bharat. We are not a nation of one billion people. We are two nations occupying a common geography. You and I live in India. Sivaa lives in Bharat. There are eight-hundred million people living in Bharat. These people are invisible to me, to my products. The two-hundred million who live in India are visible to me. But even so, not all of them are my consumers. After I factor in income, inclination and imbecility, I can only tap about one million consumers. They already have my products. I’m tired of selling to them.’

  ‘So basically, you’ve nothing Bharat needs.’

  ‘Who said I’ve nothing that Bharat needs?’ Eshwar
looked shocked. ‘I said Bharat is invisible to my products.’

  ‘I have no interest in turning Bharat into India. Is that why you called me here? You said you wanted to talk about a channel partnership.’

  ‘Did I say I wanted to turn Bharat into India?’ Eshwar turned to Ratnakar. ‘Ratna my man, did I say I wanted to turn Bharat into India?’

  ‘Pillai, why don’t you just tell me what you have in mind?’

  ‘It’s very simple. Bharat wants to turn into India. I merely intend to make us money off that desire. Let me ask you a question: how was your flight? Was it comfortable?’

  ‘Yes, quite. Thank you.’

  ‘Of course you know the trip was unnecessary? We could have talked over the phone. Or on Skype. Or done a net meeting. We could have met in Mumbai. Or Paris.’

  ‘Are you talking about providing villagers with internet access? Is that what all this is about?’

  ‘That is part of the plan—’

  ‘Forget it! What Pillai, you misled me. You’d said you wanted to buy some content from me. I have no interest in building infrastructure to bridge the digital divide. Social Weather is a data collection enterprise. We’re not in the development racket.’

  ‘Relax. Run with me for a minute. The infrastructure is already in place. I didn’t mislead you. I do want content from you. I intend to repackage some of your existing content as a service. But my interest is not content; it’s connectivity. Content is just bait to sneak in connectivity. This was foreseen by Marshal McLuhan.’

  Anand sighed. Might as well order lunch. He gestured to a hovering waiter. ‘I’ll have the saffron chicken. Rumali rotis. Dahi. Pillai?’

  ‘The Saya kababs, my man.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The waiter felt it necessary to add a bow.

  ‘As I was saying, McLuhan foresaw most of what’s happening with the digital revolution. That’s because in spirit, he was a gamer. He didn’t look for the logic of a system; he always looked for an exit from the logic of a system. Now, he said something profound about communication mediums. He said the mind is a watchdog and that burglars who want to sneak in a medium have to use its content like a juicy piece of meat to distract the dog. You want to sneak radios into every household? Simple. Offer cricket broadcasts, radio plays, news from across the world. You want to sneak TVs into every household? Simple. Offer soaps for the women, cartoons for the kids and sports for the men. But here’s the thing. Where do you get the content for the new medium?’